Raymond Figueroa, Jr.

Ray is a co-founder and the director of the Brook Park Youth Farm Alternatives-to-Incarceration program for formerly incarcerated youth in the South Bronx. He is also the president of the New York City Community Garden Coalition where he is engaged in community organizing and policy advocacy for regulatory reforms that can improve the land tenure status of community gardens within the city’s historically marginalized BIPOC communities.

Ray is a member of the Sustainable Environmental Systems Faculty at the Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment at the Pratt Institute School of Architecture. He is also a Taconic Faculty Fellow with the Pratt Center for Community Development where he coordinates a collaborative critical environmental areas/participatory action research initiative with the CUNY Graduate Center, the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, Earth Justice, and local community residents, organizing efforts for the purposes of “greening” municipal land use decision-making processes that can allow for regenerative and resilient community development via a hyper-local, green infrastructure-based food system.

He has served as a consultant and contributor to publications, governments, research institutions, and foundations, including with the American Planning Association, Harvard University Graduate School of Design, MIT Community Innovators Lab, Columbia University – Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy, National Academy of Medicine, Design Trust for Public Space, New York City Council, NYC Mayor’s Urban Agriculture Task Force, Community Food Funders’ Affinity Group, and Nevin Cohen/Kristn Reynold’s book, "Beyond the Kale: Urban Agriculture and Social Justice Activism in New York City”